Place and Setting in Tartuffe

Abstract

Although less important than in Racine or Shakespeare, place in Moliere deserves attention. The more farcical plays have an outdoor, Italianate setting. In the highertoned indoor comedies the characters inhabit concentric circles; props, set, house, city, province, universe. At the center of Tartuffe stands the intruder, Tartuffe himself. A sequence of entrance and exit scenes defines the broader aspects of place in the play. Madame Pernelle's exit scene situates Orgon's family, a disputatious and gossipy household. Orgon's entrance reveals a person who has lost his sense of place. Conventionally in comedy the bourgeois father is happy to return from the hazards of the country to the security of his role as owner and master. To Orgon, however, the return means only reunion with Tartuffe. His entrance scene is balanced by his eviction at the hands of his protégé who changes places with him. Tartuffe's place is Orgon's house: his exits are false exits or strategic withdrawals, his return is triumphant until the regal denouement which sends him to the King's prison and Orgon's family to the King's palace where they will kneel in gratitude.